ced the blood out of his mouth and nostrils.

d in a state of insensibility to his tent: 'strepidity hurried him forward to the scene

His presence encouraged his men; sucved; and the English, after an obstinate x were repulsed.1

On

Pended this memorable and fatal battle. esde of the victors almost sixty thousand men had

engaged, and more than one-fourth were left on e field. The number of the vanquished, and the ount of their loss, are unknown. By the vanity of De Norman historians the English army has been exaggerated beyond the limits of credibility; by that

the native writers it has been reduced to a handful of resolute warriors; but both agree that with Harold and his brothers perished all the nobility of the south of England; a loss which could not be repaired. The king's mother begged as a boon the dead body of her son; and offered as a ransom its weight in gold; but the resentment of William had rendered him callous to pity, and insensible to all interested considerations. He ordered the corpse of the fallen monarch to be buried on the beach; adding with a sneer; "He "He guarded the coast while he "was alive; let him continue to guard it after "death." By stealth, however, or by purchase, the royal remains were removed from this unhallowed

57.

1 Pict. 132-134. Orderic, 182-185.

Hunt. 211. Malm.

2 See Pict. 128; Orderic, 178; and in opposition, Ingulf, 69; Chron. Sax. 172; Flor. 634; Malms. 53.

3 Baron Maseres has calculated the average weight of the human body at somewhat less than 11,000 guineas.-Pict. 138,

note.

VI.

site, and deposited in the church of Waltham, CHAP. which Harold had founded before he ascended the A.D. 1066. throne.1

1 Pictaviensis (135), and Orderic (185), say that he was buried on the beach; most of our historians (Malm. 57; West. 224; Paris, 3), that the body was given to his mother without ransom, and interred by her orders at Waltham. A more romantic story is told by the author of the Waltham MS. in the Cotton Library, Jul. D. 6, who wrote about a century afterwards. If we may believe him, two of the canons, Osgod Cnoppe, and Ailric, the childe maister, were sent to be spectators of the battle. They obtained from William, to whom they presented ten marks of gold, permission to search for the body of their benefactor. Unable to distinguish it among the heaps of the slain, they sent for Harold's mistress, Editha, surnamed "The Fair," and the "Swan's Neck." By her his features were recognised. The corpse was interred at Waltham with regal honours, in the presence of several Norman earls and gentlemen. Mr. Turner first called the attention of his readers to this MS. Hist. of Eng. i. 60.

376

CHAPTER VII.

ANGLO-SAXONS.

OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS-FEUDAL CUSTOMS BANKS IN
SOCIETY COURTS OF LAW-CRIMES SLAVES.

EVERY account of the civil polity of the AngloXons must necessarily be imperfect. We can only yew the subject through the intervening gloom of

gat centuries; and the faint light which is furnished by imperfect notices, scattered hints, and partial descriptions, may serve to irritate, but not to satisfy curiosity. It would be in vain to seek for information in the works of foreign writers; and the native historians never imagined that it could be requisite to delineate institutions with which they had been familiarized from their childhood, and which they naturally judged would be perpetuated along with their posterity.

Of the military character and predatory spirit of the Saxons an accurate notion may be formed from the Danish adventurers of the ninth and tenth centuries. Both were scions from the same Gothic stock; but the latter retained for a longer period the native properties of the original plant. Hengist and Cerdic, and their fellow-chieftains, were the sea-kings of their age, animated with the same spirit, and pursuing the same objects as the barbarians, whose ferocity yielded to the perseverance of Alfred, but subdued the pusil

POLITY OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.

377

lanimity of Ethelred. The reader has only to transfer

CHAP.

VII.

to the Saxons the Danish system of warfare, its multi- A.D. 1066. plied aggressions, its unquenchable thirst of plunder, and its unprovoked and wanton cruelties, and he will form a correct picture of the state of Britain, from the first defection of Hengist to the final establishment of the octarchy. The adventurers did not think of colonizing the countries which they conquered, till they had become weary of devastation; and then they introduced the institutions to which they had been habituated in their original settlements, and successively modified them as circumstances suggested.

Of these the most important, and that which formed the groundwork of the rest, may be discovered among the Germans in the age of Tacitus. From him we learn that every chieftain was surrounded by a number of retainers, who did him honour in time of peace, and accompanied him to the field in time of war. To fight by his side they deemed an indispensable duty; to survive his fall, an indelible disgrace. It was this artificial connection, this principle which reciprocally bound the lord to his vassal, and the vassal to his lord, that held together the northern hordes, when they issued forth in quest of adventures. They retained it in their new homes; and its consequences were gradually developed, as each tribe made successive advances in power and civilization. Hence, in process of time, and by gradual improvements, grew up the feudal system with its long train of obligations, of homage, suit, service, purveyance, reliefs, wardships, and scutage. That it was introduced into England by the Norman conqueror, is the opinion of respectable writers; and the assertion may be true, if they speak of it only in 1 Tac. Germ. 13, 14.

CHAP. its mature and most oppressive form. But all the A.D. 1066. primary germs of the feudal services may be descried

VII.

among the Saxons, even in the earlier periods of their government; and many of them flourished in full luxuriance long before the extinction of the dynasty. As the subject is interesting, I may be allowed to treat it more in detail.

That the artificial relation between the lord and his man, or vassal, was accurately understood, and that its duties were faithfully performed by the Anglo-Saxons, is sufficiently evident from numerous instances in their history. We have seen' that when Cynewulf was surprised in the dead of the night at Merton, his men refused to abandon, or even to survive their lord; and when on the next morning the eighty-four followers of Cyneheard were surrounded by a superior force, they also spurned the offer of life and liberty, and chose rather to yield up their breath in a hopeless contest, than to violate the fealty which they had sworn to a murderer and an outlaw. An attachment of this romantic and generous kind cannot but excite our sympathy. It grew out of the doctrine, that of all the ties which nature has formed or society invented, the most sacred was that which bound the lord and the vassal; whence it was inferred that the breach of so solemn an engagement was a crime of the most disgraceful and unpardonable atrocity. By Alfred it was declared inexpiable; the laws pronounced against the offender the sentence of forfeiture and death.3

See History, p. 163.

2 Chron. Sax. anno 750, p. 57.

3 Chron. Sax. 58.

the word vassal seems

Leg. Sax. p. 33, 34, 35, 142, 143. Even to have been known in England as early as the reign of Alfred. Asser, his instructor, calls the thanes of Somerset, nobiles vassalli Sumertunensis plagæ.-Asser, 33.